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PEDIATRICS Vol. 111 No. 5 May 2003, pp. 1093-1097

SPECIAL ARTICLE

An Innovative Proposal for the Health Care Financing System of the United States

Glenn E. Austin, MD* and Robert D. Burnett, MD{ddagger}

* Beaverton, Oregon
{ddagger} Sunnyvale, California

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Abbreviations: FHIRS, Federal Health Insurance Reserve System • NHI, National Health Insurance

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.


   INTRODUCTION
 
With >40 million uninsured residents in the United States, we still spend more of our gross national product on health care than any other country in the world.1 Changes in the various health financing systems must occur if this problem is to be solved.2–4 A sound medical financing system that will meet the basic needs of the entire population requires efficient use of the medical dollar while ameliorating medical care inflation and encouraging innovation, productive competition, and progress toward quality cost-effective health care. Neither the current market-driven system nor the existing governmental quasi-National Health Insurance (NHI) Medicare and Medicaid programs meet these requirements.5–8 Single payer and nationalized health care in other countries suffer from under funding, long waiting lines, inadequate facilities, rigid regulations, and frequently lack of patient choice.9 We propose new and innovative reforms that require a Federal Health Insurance Reserve System (FHIRS) to reduce ingrained errors and enhance the positive aspects of both the market and government systems. Whatever system develops a FHIRS will be pertinent, be it our new market-driven proposal or a single payer or national health insurance systems.


   PROBLEMS REQUIRING SOLUTIONS
 

  1. The uninsured and underinsured.
  2. Politically and litigiously mandated benefits.10–12
  3. Unequal tax treatment for health financing.
  4. Lack of individual choice of plans and providers.
  5. Perverse financial incentives for the insurance industry.13–17
  6. Underfunded and confused Medicaid programs.7,18
  7. The Ponzi-type Medicare scam of cross-generational financing.19–22.
  8. Insufficient national clinical trials and lack of constraint of unnecessary malpractice suits.4,23,24
  9. Unfair competition by hospitals charging their own patients different amounts for identical services and pharmaceutical companies charging individuals and small organizations more than large organizations, increasing the number of uninsured.
  10. Excessive costs threaten the national economy, access to quality medical services, and federal and state budgets partly because of the lack of economic incentives to limit health care expenditures.
  11. Lack of a . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Reprint requests to (G.E.A.) 10506 SW Forest Ridge Place, Beaverton OR 97007. E-mail gamd@easystreet.com


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